* Intellectual Guts: Yale and the Daily News

Letter to the Editor
Yale Daily News

Whatever one thinks of Yale Press’s censorship (Bolton v. Blair) of the Muhammad cartoons one of the things I admire most about Yale and the Yale Daily News is their courage in making space for both sides of an intellectual argument to be heard, even when one (or both) is clearly wrong.

They did this in the 70’s with racism: Black Panthers and the now discredited scholar who proposed that African Americans had inferior brain power; they did it in the eighties with feminism and sexism; and they did it in the 90’s with gay rights and straight uptights.

Now they are doing it with the Yale Press censorship of the Muhammad cartoons and the very cartoonists and editors who published those cartoon appearing on campus.

This is what a Univerity is about: pursuing the truth wherever it leads.

Bravo Yale and YDN!

However,intellectual debate or not, it is ironic that the Judeo-Christian world has been so intolerant of the censorship imposed by the Muslim world on the image of Muhammad.

The Old Testament is full of censorship. The face of God could not be looked upon, nor his name (Yahweh) written or spoken--hence the millennia-old text-message-type abbreviation, YHWH.

Ham is cursed (Genesis 9:20-27) for "viewing" his father Noah's nakedness, and the 3000 year history of racism begins.

And unless my memory fails me, one of the central pillars of the Protestant Reformation was the taboo against images: hence the ransacking of Roman Catholic churches and the breaking of statues and desecration of stained glass and painted images, something Mr. Blair's country knows about firsthand. (Ever use the word "iconoclasm"?)


So former U.N. Ambassador Bolton (LAW ’76) and his friends who call Yale Press’s censorship “intellectual cowardice” shouldn't get too huffy and puffy in their smug rejection of Muslim taboos which prompted Yale Press's censorship.

Nor should former Prime Minister Blair, now teaching a religion and ethics course at Yale, who applauds the Yale Press’s decision as “absolutely the right thing”, fail to see the fascinating and horrifying stalemate created between different aspects of First Amendment rights here: Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Religion.
Pusillanimous Yale Press ?



















































(Removed by Yale Daily News)
When a taboo is elevated to the level of zeal bloodshed has often been the consequence. If I recall correctly, the Christian Crusades slaughtered a few folk in propagating its own taboos.)

It is only the intellectual debate embraced by Yale itself and the Yale Daily News which can keep the zeal in check.

Paul D. Keane
M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.


above letter appeared as
# 47 in comments to the article:

Cartoonist’s visit causes stir
By Alison Greenberg, Danny Serna and Esther Zuckerman
Contributing Reporter, Contributing Reporter, Staff Reporter
Published Friday, October 2, 2009





______________________________________________________________
. .


Comments from the Yale Daily News:


#51 By Hieronymus 1:55p.m. on October 5, 2009
*Sigh*

#47: proving again the superfluity--indeed, the embarrassment--of DIV.

Paraphrase: "Jews wrote YHWH and Protestants trashed Catholics, so, we moderns should think twice about criticizing others' censorship."

Ah, equivalency and moral relativism--at least M.Divs are consistent.

Why do M.Divs even, well, *bother* with the G-d question, given that to them 'twould seem the conclusion is foregone?
____________________________________________________________
#53 By PDK M.'Div. '80 5:34a.m. on October 6, 2009
"...should think twice about criticizing others' censorship." Hieronymous

Hieronymous seems a bit testy.

I believe the words were "it is ironic how intolerant the Judeo-Christian world is of Muslim censorship of the Muhammad image".

Does that say anything about "think twice about critciziing others'censorship?" Go at it. Criticize all you want. Am merely pointing out an irony.

My point may be (and it is still gestating) that religions go through evolutionary stages and that some of the components of Islam may be stuck in "arrested development" just as the Judeo-Christian world was stuck for centuries in "arrested devlopment", and remnants of it remain so today, in the name of orthodoxy.

Indeed my own letter was "censored" by the YDN and I am not objecting. If you want to read the omitted penultimate sentence go to http://theantiyale.blogspot.com

I assume YDN was acting responsibly since they thought my anti-christian sentiments about the christian Crusades might inflame an already incendiary situation. (Will they do that again here?)


Kindly don't lump me together with all "Divs".

My history at YDN as publisher, editor and sole writer of
Holy Smoke: Opinionation from Holy Hill 1976-80, and now as blogger of The Anti-Yale, is one of gadfly and irritant to the Yale and other institutions involved in the idolatrous worship known as Materialism. And don't for a minute think Materialism isn't a religion whose rites are practiced this very second on millions of digital altars around the globe.


I named those institutions Mercantilia in 1977 at YDS and that label still applies today.

My comments have nothing to do with "foregone conclusions."

And by the way, my comments are signed with a real name, and an academic background, for what that is worth.

Paul Keane

M.Div.(Yale'80)
M.A.(Middlebury '97), M.Ed.(Kent State,'72)

__________________________________________________________________














______________________________________________________________________

#56 By Hieronymus 10:13a.m. on October 7, 2009
@#53

Apologies, Paul Keane: YDN did not find my response suitable for publishing.

Rest assured: my skewering of your hypocrisy was amusing and incisive.
_________________________________________________________________
#57 By Paul Keane 5:15p.m. on October 7, 2009
My dear Hieronymous:

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1833-1834), book II, ch. IV

While, Hieronymous, I do not subscribe to personifications of either evil or good in the form of deities or devils, I do believe that separating one's mind from one's heart is a pyschological equivalent of what Dante called the Inferno.

I recall when I was much younger taking a kind of sterile exhilaration from skewering others on the rapier of my prose.

Do I detect an echo of same in your "Rest assured: my skewering of your hypocrisy was amusing and incisive."

I could save you forty years of trouble, but unfortunately each new generation must learn these lessons anew.

So, Good night Hieronymous. The rest is silence . . .

Paul K

* An unlikely Defender of Yale Divinity School

Here is some back and forth to the 10/28/09 article in the Yale Daily News entitled:
Harvard professor seeks ‘gay’ term in Bible






#9 By Yale 2008 11:07a.m. on October 28, 2009


Hieronymus,

Do you want to take a shot at this, or should I go first?
Yale Div School strikes again.



#11 By Hieronymus 12:03p.m. on October 28, 2009


Well, I did like this sentence best:

"What we need is the positive equivalent of the sodomite," he said, referring to the residents of the Biblical city Sodom who engaged in homosexual and heterosexual acts depicted as perverse.

I like how, all in one sentence, we get a sense of the lecturer's stance (that the term "sodomite" carries pejorative connotations--and that this need not be so) and the YDN's stance ("depicted as perverse" versus objectively perverse).

Also, I can just picture the sort of bobble-headed faux confusion by the interviewees ("Sodomy? Bad? Um... I'm confused your assertion..."). It is that sort of affectation of innocence/ignorance that keeps from most pews.

Weirdly, I respect most Muslims more than I do most (avowed) Christians--at least they believe in their book!



#12 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com 12:14p.m. on October 28, 2009


#9 There is something unpleasant in your tone here---like a schoolyard bully making fun of a weakling. If you think of the divines as worthy of scorn isn't it sadistic to indulge your impulse to torment them? I am the last person to quash legitimate criticism but taking the pleasure one gets from a skeet shoot seems a bit much. And then, to egg on Hieronymus to join your fun?

Paul Keane


#13 By Yale 2008 1:13p.m. on October 28, 2009


Paul Keane,
Yale Div School is a joke. Just like your blog.





#16 By
http://lomanchildren.blogspot.com/
5:25p.m. on October 28, 2009

# 13 Yale 2008




















In the last 50 years, Yale Divinity School has produced William Sloane Coffin, one of the driving forces behind ending the Viet Nam War and considered to be one of the three great speakers of our time (Fulton J. Sheen and Norman Vincent Peale are the other two);and, Senators John Danforth and Gary Hartt, neither of whom is an intellectual light-weight.







































In 1976 the Divinity School's students hosted a talk by Quentin Crisp, then starring in his one act-show at the Long Wharf Theatre entitled The Naked Civil Servant, about his life as Britain's most famous transvestite.


















At that talk, faculty from the University's Psychology Department invited Mr. Crisp to participate in interviews about what it is to be a trans-gendered person (he accepted), blazing the way for Yale's entire sexual liberation movement in the late 70's to the present, 2009.

Try as you might, to trivialize the Divinity School as a "joke" is a limp effort, even if one confines its contribution to society to the few examples mentioned above, ignoring its two, no, three century history in the new world.

Add to those recent examples H. Richard Niebuhr's own struggles with depression and the fact that he pioneered the presence of divinity student volunteers in mental hospitals 50 years ago, a presence which has brought untold hope to thousands of suffering humans, and Yale Divinity School becomes a very serious and potent force for social change and for alleviation of suffering in our world.




Indeed, even though I was a gadfly on their sacred hide during my years there as publisher, editor, and writer of Holy Smoke,(and for the thirty years since)they amazed me by awarding me the Charles S. Mersick Prize at my 1980 graduation "For effective public address, especially in preaching."



















One cannot with puerile barbs discount such a potent force for freedom of expression and pursuit of the truth as is Yale Divinity School.

As for my blog http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/
(one of twelve blogs): It stands on its own merits or demerits, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable I hope, including the privileged undergraduates who throw verbal darts while shielding themselves behind the anonymity of digital posts.

Paul Keane

NB: For an insider's view of the Divinity School read "Sam Todd: Fugitive from God, Country and Yale?" at http://yaledisappearance.blogspot.com/

* The Arrogant Young Prince at Yale

My birth home at the foot (the head) of

The Sleeping Giant in Mt. Carmel (Hamden), Ct.





















The Sleeping Giant

A hill in Hamden, Connecticut

by

Donald Hall


The whole day long under the walking sun
That poised an eye on me from its high floor,
Holding my toy beside the clapboard house
I looked at him, the summer I was four.

I was afraid the waking arm would break
From the loose earth and rub against his eyes
A fist of trees, and the whole country tremble
In the exultant labor of his rise;

Then he with giant steps in the small streets
Would stagger, cutting off the sky, to seize
The roofs from house and home because we had
Covered his shape with dirt and planted trees;

And then kneel down and rip with fingernails
A trench to pour the enemy Atlantic
Into our basin, and the water rush,
With streets full and all the voices frantic.

That was the summer I expected him.
Later the high and watchful sun instead
Waked low behind the house, and school began,
And winter pulled a sheet over his head.





















The Mt. Carmel Burying Ground at the foot (the head) of The Sleeping Giant









I have been a life-long observer of and commentator about Yale University (my 1980 alma mater) from my 1976-80 essays entitled Holy Smoke:Opinionation from Holy Hill to my current blogs The Anti-Yale http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/ and Talking Turkey at Yale and Elsewhere http://senatorsandbag.blogspot.com/

It was with some surprise then that one of my comments in the digital postings of the Yale Daily News article "Mr. Yale knows no gender" was satirized 11/12/09 by one impudent pup on the basis of outsidership: Age and Pastness.

Here is the comment and my reply. Unfortunately I cannot supply the name of the arrogant young Yale prince who posted the comment, since with rare exception, all posters (except me, apparently) post anonymously. This used to be called cowardly but in today's world all values are valueless and pseudonymous slander is socially acceptable among the digital country-club set.

The posts (regarding an article on an undergraduate woman's decision to run for "Mr. Yale" and her initial rejection) follow here:

#2 By Disstionary 5:13a.m. on November 12, 2009
Brava or maybe Bravo for Jen---and for Yale after its initial faux pas.
Now, if the situation can avoid dissing based on gender stereotyping--even transgender stereotyping--it will have achieved something truly novel (hunks and honeys are mild examples: usually it is words associated with reproductive equipment, words I need not specify they are [so] common in the disstionary).
See "trans-gender dorms at Yale and Harvard..." post at http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/



#7 By Yalie 9:19a.m. on November 12, 2009
@#2
Dude, are you like retired or something? Shouldn't you be focusing on your day job? "Glory days" are so... over.
Oh: and Yay Jen!





#18 By Disstionary 11:47a.m. on November 2, 2009
#7
The comment is ageist and presumptuous.

I read this digital version of YDN at 5.a.m. with coffee before work. Do I have your leave to do so my young lord?

Glory days? It was like war, with words for weapons. I was a townie and Yale was a pompous, smug, dying male enclave.(1976-80)

If anything, it is Yale which may be having trouble leaving the past.

I was drawn to puncture it a few times---but those were gorey days, not glory days.

If the thrust of your comment is that the 'old' and the townfolk are unwelcome in your Yale Daily News's digital arena, that's the very elitism which has turned my stomach at Yale for 50 years.

Glad to have irritated you with my wrinkles, silver hair, and unprivileged [read 'local townsperson'] background.*

I take my humble leave of your youthful lordship's prose, reserving the right to comment on a place which continues to intrude (economically, architecturally, socially, politically) on the lives and values of those born and raised in New Haven and environs.

Adieu.

Paul Keane
M.Div. '80


#43 By Master 10:17 p.m. on November 12, 2009
If she is eligible to compete for an M.A. degree, she is eligble to compete for Mr. Yale from an etymological standpoint:
Word Origin & History
mister
as a title of courtesy before a man's Christian name, 1447, unaccented variant of master.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper Cite This Source


http://theantiyale.blogspot.com


#44 By 11 11:38p.m. on November 12, 2009
can i be miss america? why is it called miss anyways? everything is so restrictive. homo sapiens? gross- thats soooo heteronormative.




To # 44 By Mistress 9:50 p.m. November 13, 2009
The etymological answer to your question (Why is it called "Miss" anyway?) is that "Mrs." was an abbreviation of mistress.
[Apparently "mistress" refers to both married and unmarried according to this etymology]

Word Origin & History

Mrs.

1582, abbreviation of mistress (q.v.), originally in all uses of that word. The pl. Mmes. is an abbreviation of Fr. mesdames, pl. of madame. Pronunciation "missis" was considered vulgar at least into 18c. The Mrs. "one's wife" is from 1920.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

This is getting to be worthy of a new post on

http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/



(see “The Arrogant Young Prince from Yale”)



#49 By ? 10:22a.m. on November 14, 2009
@#48 "Mistress"

P. Keane is now claiming his own gender bent status? How very... Zelig.


#52 By King kong 7:08p.m. on November 14, 2009
Must we waffle on the specificities of sex and the quirky quagmires that cause us to generalize genes to genders?
Paul Keane I do not understand your being a master then a mistress but this is America and I will fight for your right to do so.







#53 By Zelig AKA Forrest Gump 1:51p.m. on November 15, 2009
#52
You almost stumped me on Zelig. I had to Google the allusion. I've been called Forrest Gump for the same ubiquity in the past, but Zelig is a new one.

On an entertainingly offtopic note: thanks to whoever said my contributions to the HIV story were "entertainingly offtopic". I have been looking for an epitaph and that fits me perfectly.

Paul Keane
(1944 - 20--)
Entertainingly Offtopic

I love it!!!

#54 By The late Quentin Crisp in memoriam 5:32p.m. on November 15, 2009
Dear King Kong:
Thanks for protecting my freedom of expression.

As for Mister Mistress: Would you expect less from a divinity student who in 1976 invited Quentin Crisp to speak at Yale Divinity School on the topic: What it is to be a transvestite.

Can you think of a contemporary analogue?
Chastity Bono being invited by the Vatican to speak on celibacy and gender identity?

There is nothing as scandalous in my recollection as the image of Mr. Crisp in dyed purple hair, lipstick and painted nails,walking through august alabaster hallways peopled with portraits of Jonathan Edwards and H. Richard Niebuhr to speak to 200 listeners in the Divinity School Auditorium.


























[Quentin Crisp, whose opening line at his Yale Divinity School talk was, "Are we all agreed then ; psychology was a mistake?"]
















No Divinity School faculty attended: But some Psychology faculty did. They invited Crisp to participate in interviews about the subject of cross gender idenity and he agreed. Thus began the long history of Yale's gender identity movement.

I am proud to have insisted 34 years ago that ALL people are entitled to respect, including Mr. Quentin Crisp.




#55 By Please define Mr. 8:51p.m. on November 15, 2009

If Mr. Yale is a competition for men, then sorry, Jen. You should be disqualified. You're not a man. If Mr. Yale is for people who dress like men, then Jen should be in. If the idea of Mr. Yale is wrong in its own right for only allowing men to be a part of it, then the bold thing to do would be to nominate a woman who dresses in the most feminine way possible.

#57 You say Mister; I say Master 10:15 p.m. November 15, 2009

#55

Mister means Master. Please define Master.
PK
http://theantiyale.blogspot.com


#62 Jen-der Jen-eration 9:01 p.m. November 17, 2009

This is the first generation in the history of the world without a culturally accepted definition of "man" and "woman". Biologial determinism is passe. Sexism is passe. If a penis doesn't mean manhood and a vagina doesn't mean womanhood, then up is down and down is up or over or beside or around. It is an Alice in Wonderland world.
What will this confusion arrive at? If there are no polarities, if there are no dichotomies in gender identity, how will infants come to see themselves as they grow through the psychosocial stages ?

I am a Being? I am a creature? I am an appetite? We may already as a culture have capitulated to the latter: identity based on appetite.

see "Transgender dorms..." post
http://theantiyale.blogspot.com



#68 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com 6:43p.m. on November 29, 2009
Caster Semenya rules!
(see this week's New Yorker)
PK




___________________________________________________
My Town/Gown "credentials" (as if any were required):



















Born: December 28, 1944 in Grace-New Haven Hospital (now Yale-New Haven Hospital)

My family home was at the foot (the head) of the Sleeping Giant in nearby Mt. Carmel (Hamden) until 1992. I still retain property there (in the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground).




Alice Nugent Ward







State and Elm Street circa 1950














The Green and Yale two blocks from State and Elm




My maternal grandmother ( Alice Nugent Ward, pictured above in her Rebekah gown ) lived in a 3rd-floor walk-up with no hot-water two blocks from the palaces of Yale, at Elm and State Streets ( photo above, now the Shartenberg project ) from 1944 until 1961 when, at the age of 72, she moved to another fringe of the Yale/New Haven ghetto, 100 Howe Street, and an efficiency apartment.

Current home: White River Junction, Vermont

M. Div., 1980, Yale University

* O Death, Where is thy Sting? Corinthians 1: 15: 55

Paul and Chris Keane in a defiant pose hours before Chris's death from AIDS, 2003 (Photo by Chris's son, Jonathan Mark Keane)




Christopher Mark Keane

1946-2003

Yale Daily News

Not just a disease
By Justin Berk
Published Tuesday, December 1, 2009
.
Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day — a day to remember the 33.4 million people infected by HIV, to remember the 2 million people who died from complications of AIDS last year alone and to remember that HIV has not gone away.
Since 1981, the disease has claimed more than 25 million lives (more than three times the entire population of New York City). Yet, although the statistics are dramatic, numbers cannot express the full weight of the epidemic. AIDS is not merely another infectious disease but rather a social disease with unparalleled cultural impact, the...

#1 By 25th Anniversary at Yale on December 1, 2009
See Yale's contribution to banishing the "AIDS is a gay disease" stigma.

This story has not previously been told.

"Twenty-fifth anniversary: Yale Uncovers Heterosexual Connection to AIDS"

October 2 post and video

http://theantiyale.blogspot.com

PK

#2 By FailBoat on December 1, 2009
AIDS is obviously not an exclusively "gay disease", but consider the following statistics for the US:

1 in 4 gay men has HIV/AIDS. Right now. That's 25% versus the overall male infection rate of 0.038%.

71% of male American HIV/AIDS cases are constituted by gay men, who make up about 10% of the population. Most female HIV/AIDS cases are constituted by women who've had sex with men who've had sex with men.

The transmission rate of HIV from receptive anal sex are 1 in 30. (penetrative anal sex carries 1 in 300 odds). Vaginal penetration carry transmission rates of only 1 in 100,000.

Yeah, HIV/AIDS is not only a "gay disease", but it disproportionately effects gay men. Schools and health educators do gay individuals a disservice by not illuminating the increased hazards associated with an MSM lifestyle.


#3 By An AIDS Epidemiologist on December 1, 2009
Failboat's statistics are simply WRONG.


#4 By FailStats December 1, 2009
One might even say FailBoat's statistics are an EPIC FAIL


#5 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 1, 2009
#3:

As one whose own brother died of AIDS six years ago at age 57, I would be interested in hearing the correct stats. I have been involved in this issue since before HIV was discovered (1982).If there is one thing I am sure of regarding statistics it is that people lie about personal matters like sex. Lies don't make good stats.

PK

#6 By FailBoat December 1, 2009

Any AIDS Epidemiologist knows that the truth about MSM transmission of HIV/AIDS is one of the most shameful open secrets in sex education today.

Citations: http://www.avert.org/usa-transmission-gender.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/msm/resources/factsheets/msm.htm
http://aids.about.com/od/hivaidsstats/f/infectionrisk.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a2.htm

"To reassess those findings and previous HIV testing behaviors among MSM, CDC analyzed data from five of 17 cities participating in the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) system. This report summarizes preliminary findings from the HIV-testing component of NHBS, which indicated that, of MSM surveyed, 25% were infected with HIV, and 48% of those infected were unaware of their infection. To decrease HIV transmission, MSM should be encouraged to receive an HIV test at least annually, and prevention programs should improve means of reaching persons unaware of their HIV status, especially those in populations disproportionately at risk."

"In the 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting, an estimated 19,620 MSM (18,296 MSM and 1,324 MSM who inject drugs) received a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS, accounting for 71% of male adults and adolescents and 53% of all people receiving an HIV/AIDS diagnosis that year."

"MSM is the only risk group in the U.S. in which new HIV infections are increasing. While new infections have
declined among both heterosexuals and injection drug users, the annual number of new HIV infections among MSM
has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s."

"A recent study, conducted in 5 large US cities, found that HIV prevalence among black MSM (46%) was more than twice that among white MSM (21%)"

#7 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com (PK) on December 2, 2009

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

(Note disparity between numbers in in par.4----PK)

The term men who have sex with men (MSM) refers to all men who have sex with other men, regardless of how they identify themselves (gay, bisexual, or heterosexual).

In the United States, HIV and AIDS have had a tremendous impact on MSM. Consider these facts:

AIDS has been diagnosed for more than half a million MSM. Over 300,000 MSM with AIDS have died since the beginning of the epidemic.

MSM made up more than two thirds (68%) of all men living with HIV in 2005, even though only about 5% to 7% of men in the United States reported having sex with other men.

In a 2005 study of 5 large US cities, 46% of African American MSM were HIV-positive.

Since HIV/AIDS in MSM was first diagnosed 1981, gay and bisexual men have been leaders in dealing with the challenges of the epidemic.

Gay organizations and activists, through their work, have contributed greatly to many of the guidelines for prevention, treatment, and the care of people living with HIV/AIDS.

For complex reasons, HIV/AIDS continues to take a high toll on the MSM population. For example, the number of new HIV/AIDS cases among MSM in 2005 was 11% more than the number of cases in 2001.

It is unclear whether this increase is due to more testing, which results in more diagnoses, or to an increase in the number of HIV infections.

Whatever the reasons, in 2005, MSM still accounted for about 53% of all new HIV/AIDS cases and 71% of cases in male adults and adolescents.

Last Modified by CDC Sept. 26, 2009

#8 By @#5 on December 2, 2009

"I have been involved in this issue since before HIV was discovered..."

No doubt...


#9 By One wonders . . . on December 2, 2009

One wonders about # 8.

In 1981 a young MD at Yale developed a black spot on his leg, kaposi's sarcoma, which normally affects only very elderly men.

His death a year later due to a new illness called at that time Immonodeficiency Syndrome led to the creation of an informal group at Yale
(later named AIDS Information Dissemination Service) to spread information about that new disease which at that time was thought to be transmitted only by same gender male sexual contact.

In the process of working with that group as a divinity grad I discovered a female prostitute who had transmitted AIDS to her infant, who was born with the disease and who never left the hospital.

The resulting confuson, panic and acrimony over the possibility that AIDS could be transmitted heterosexually were the result of a 60 Minutes piece televised in February, 1984 on the issue.

Excerpts can be seen at
http:// the antiyale.blogspot.com (October] post entitled "25th anniversary..."

That my own brother would die of the illness in 2003 which doctors said he had contracted decades before, is a sad irony for those interested in pushing back the boundaries of ignorance about health.

In retrospect, the idea that AIDS or any microbe could have a sexual preference seems a bias based in animosity and projection if not down right hate and wishful thinking.

The initial hate-mongering (AIDS is God's punishment of homosexuals for the sin of their sexual choices) was instantly dispelled by the information that heterosexuals could transmit the disease too.

Not always, but some times hate loses, even for people who enjoy pointing fingers.

PK

* Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Steeple.

Yale Daily News


A misguided vote on minarets
By Lorenz Langer
Guest Columnist
Published Wednesday, December 2, 2009

On Oct. 1, I attended the Master’s Tea with Kurt Westergaard that was, before and after, debated with vigor in the pages of the News. I was rather taken aback by the vitriolic attacks levelled against the elderly Danish cartoonist on that occasion; the reproach that his drawing insulted Islam and all Muslims seemed to overlook that Westergaard had not aimed to ridicule a religion, but some of its most militant followers. I also felt that the audience ignored an important difference between European and American approaches to integration. With much more extensive (and expensive) social...

#1 By (PK) http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 2, 2009

"They [minarets]stood for the religious and political monopoly of Islam that denied others’ fundamental rights, especially their equality before the law."

According to this logic Switzerland should ban steeples and Star of David architecture too a[s] symbols of sexism and racism:

Women and men have segregated seating in Conservative Synagogues.

The Judeo-Christian world has used the Genesis story to stigmatize and keep women subservient for thousands of years.

(Eve--the woman--not Adam --the man-- is said to be responsible for Original Sin by her failure to avoid Satan's tempatation with the fruit of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.)

Racism's origins are said to come from the Curse of Ham by Noah in the Old Testament, a curse which results in Ham's son, Canaan, being born with dark skin.

Architecture symbolizes the destructive history of religion as well as its constructive impulses.

And what about noise pollution? All those bells clangings from steeples for centuries.

Finally, Freud makes it very clear that archictecture can boast phallic and womb symbols. Steeples, (and I suppose minarets) are clearly masculine dominance symbols, to say the least.

#2 By Huh? on December 2, 2009

"Steeples, (and I suppose minarets) are clearly masculine dominance symbols..."

Well, duh: vaginal architecture lets too much rain in...

Hey, how 'bout those Christian honor killings we hear so much about? Got any words 'o wisdom to impart there?

Love to hear your thoughts on the widespread suppression, oppression, and killing of Muslims currently taking place in Christian-majority nations. Oh, wait...

#3 By yalie on December 2, 2009

Thoughtful and well-written essay. All this does highlight just how complex things really are.


#4 By Vaginal Architecture on December 2, 2009

#2 Well, duh: vaginal architecture lets too much rain in...

And what do you think the concave fortress (square donut) architecture of Yale residential colleges amounts to?

No one denies that atrocities have taken place in the name of ALL religions. Are you actually suggesting that Christianty's hands are less soiled than
Islam's? ((the crusades; slavery?)

#5 By Peter Gruber on December 2, 2009

Lorenz Langer should probably stay in the USA, one of the most Muslim-hating countries in the world. A democratically supported ban of minarets seems in his (former?) home country to disturb him more than the daily terror against Muslims in the US. A few examples:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-arrests-in-americas-war-on-islam.html

Lorenz Langer is a classical example for intellectual bigotry far away from real life of people who spent their time with paid work in order to allow him his reality-detached spare time at university.


#6 By Huh? on December 2, 2009

"Are you actually suggesting that Christianty's hands are less soiled than
Islam's? ((the crusades; slavery?)"

If you would research those old canards rather than simply parroting them you would find not only a much more nuanced view but one that, indeed, favors Christianity in both instances.

That you spout as you do, however, indicates to me that you have not done so nor have any intention of doing so. So... "whatevah."

#7 By Hmm... on December 2, 2009

I am sure to regret this...

Let us take first the "slavery" meme.

What groups and major individuals first moved to end modern slavery? Hmm?
17th century Quakers and Mennonites, maybe? And can you say "Wilberforce?"

And, let's see, which "cultures" engage in slavery TODAY? Let's start with the Christian nations, shall we?

What? No Western Civs engage in slavery today? Gads! Then... whom?

Oh: wait, here we go: the following is but a brief list of the many countries that still engage, often openly, in the buying and selling of slaves (world estimate for enslaved individuals exceeds 27MM):
Sudan
Saudi
Ghana
Niger
(you figure out the connection...)

Oh, but not ALL slave-traders are Muslim, let us not forget
China
Nepal
Myanmar

So: you can moan about Christianity's historical role in slavery (which would be: ending it), but why not face up to which cultures engage in the buying and selling of humans RIGHT NOW?

27 million is not a small number, and exceeds by severalfold the total US slave population 1790-1850.

But you keep on whinging about the past, brother, while your fellow humans suffer and die. You seem okay with that...

#8 By to #6 on December 2, 2009

I have, and you're wrong.

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius."

#9 By Nuanced Canardist on December 2, 2009

#6:
Nuanced? Biblical justifications for slavery were preached from pulpits in both the North and South for decades before the Civil War. And John Brown took his radical Christianity to Harpur's Ferry, in an act of Christian terorism designed to shake up the hypocritical Christians who sustained a government which legalized selling human beings for money., if there ever was one.
.
The only reason Christianity might emerge in a slightly favorable light in the matter of Abolitionism is that Harriet Beecher Stowe (a famous preacher's daughter and wife of a theology teacher)) used the "pulpit" of Uncle Tom's Cabin to make Christians and Christian preachers feel guilty about profiteering off human flesh and breeding humans through rape and sexual coercion.

Alluding to the Crusades is a candard? A decoy for what? To lure modern Christian liberals into masochistic breast beating and self flaggellation?

Canard seems like a glib and flip criticism, the very parroting and spouting for which you have so little patience.

If you demand research to support assertions, kindly produce something more
specific than name calling generalities.

PK


#10 By Hmm... on December 2, 2009

The fact remains: The Crusades were a counterattack on Islam—not an unprovoked assault as Armstrong and other revisionist historians portray. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis ("The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years") puts it well:

Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad, it was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. It was, with few exceptions, limited to the successful wars for the recovery of southwest Europe, and the unsuccessful wars to recover the Holy Land and to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans. The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was [IS] perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. … The object of jihad is [EVEN NOW] to bring the whole world under Islamic law.

Dar al'Islam; Dar al'Harb: which are you?

#11 By to #7 on December 2, 2009

First, you do realize that Nigeria is 40% Christian, right? And that human trafficking is a serious problem in Christian Eastern Europe?

"So: you can moan about Christianity's historical role in slavery (which would be: ending it), but why not face up to which cultures engage in the buying and selling of humans RIGHT NOW?"

Historical examples are brought up to disprove the allegation thrown around that Christianity is somehow superior to Islam, or that Islam is a religion of violence/evil, and so forth.

To be more formal, the fact that people of religion X are doing action Y in this particular century C1 does not mean that X always leads to Y for all C, or even that X always leads to Y for *any* C. The statement you're making about the relationship between X and Y is a correlative one, but you're interpreting it as a causal one, which is incorrect. In order to show a causal relationship, you would need to demonstrate that it is X, and not another factor, leading to Y.

The introduction of a historical example -- religion A also did action Y in another century C2 -- lets us work out the following:

A(C2) --> Y
X(C1) --> Y

This is a problem called equifinality, and it usually suggests that you need to account for more variables, since the variation in your independent variable (here, religion) doesn't seem to be affecting your dependent variable.

All of that said, you can expand the time period you're looking at quite a bit and find that slavery is a very persistent human institution, including under Christian rulers. As a fun example of Christian justifications for slavery, St. Aquinas argued that slavery was a consequence of original sin and a natural phenomenon.

tl;dr: You're conflating correlation with causation and don't know your history.


#12 By Allah huAkbar on December 2, 2009

Professors and organizations espousing political correctness try to paint the Crusades as an attempt by the West to colonize the Middle East, or as religious wars aimed at forcibly converting the Muslim world to Christianity. Not so. They were, in fact, a concerted effort by Europe to roll back centuries of jihad expansion into Christian territories. Moreover, once the crusaders established states in the Levant, they made little effort to convert the native population to Christ. Anyone remotely familiar with European history ought to know this. As late as the seventeenth century, Islamic forces were attempting to penetrate deep into the heart of Europe. The Battle of Vienna in 1683, where Polish forces repulsed a Muslim army, represented the last great jihad into Europe. Until now.

The new jihad has taken on different forms. Massive Muslim immigration into Europe has given the jihadists of Al-Qaeda many recruits to fashion a new army and thus finally bring a significant portion of the West to Allah.

It is bizarre and questionable that any present day political ideology should be driven by events that took place a thousand years ago. What's more, I wonder why so many Westerners collapse into a guilt coma at the mere mention of the Crusades without asking some important questions. How did the ancient birth place of Christianity, the stomping grounds of the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, and the incubator that produced the creed most Christians repeat on Sunday mornings become Muslim in the first place? It was the result of Muhammad's war of conquests which lasted almost a thousand years that swallowed the birthplace of Christianity and then stomped out the light that once burned so brightly there.

The Crusades were a belated, misguided, and often ignoble response to hundreds of years of Islamic "crusades." That march of brutal Islamic imperialism and colonization in the name of Allah ended at the gates of Vienna on a date that should mean something to the world: September 11, 1683. To be a good Muslim is to long for the renewal of that conquest of Europe and the West.

#13 By Allah al-Raheem on December 2, 2009

One would do well to examine many of the draconian and intolerant beliefs of Islam without the incoherent contortions that Islamic apologists give to such issues as the sickening mistreatment of women and girls or the Nazi-like (complete with yellow patches on the clothing) Dhimmi status (a form of slavery) required of Christians and Jews in Muslim lands.

Or how about Muhammad, who, had he lived today in any western nation would be considered a pedophile due to the fact that his eleventh (and favorite) wife was 6 years old when they married and 9 when the marriage was consummated (the loving husband was 52). That's really not very much like the historical Jesus, which is one of many examples where the moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam touted by the left crumbles in the light of inconvenient facts.

Of all the major religions, only the Islam preaches--and pursues--world domination through violent means.

#14 By Eleni Martsoukou on December 2, 2009

There is much to agree and to disagree with the article by Lorenz Langer and previous postings.
But my point lies elsewhere.
Legally speaking, the assertion that "these specific guarantees are not generally held to be peremptory" when it comes to the European Convention of Human Rights is erroneous. The European Convention of Human Rights and its provisions are mandatory for all states members of the Council of Europe.
Just for clarification purposes without going into the substantive merits of the debate of Islam within Europe.


#15 By Egalitarian on December 2, 2009

To #2: Orthodox Judaism has gender-segregated seating in synagogues. Conservative Judaism does not require gender-segregated seating, and the majority of Conservative synagogues do not have it. My own synagogue falls under this category. Women are permitted and encouraged to praticipate in services and rituals just as men do, and we have even had a female rabbi and multiple female presidents.

Also, Original Sin is a Christian concept and does not exist in Judaism. We believe that all people are born innocent and that we become sinners as a result of the choices that we make of our own free will.

For all the talk of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is important to understand that Judaism and Christianity are different religions and that Jews do not necessarily believe all of the things that Christians believe. Get your facts straight before you make these sorts of comments.


#16 By (PK) http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 2, 2009

Egalitarian:

Love your polite scrappiness!

You are correct about Conservative Judaism. I did mean Orthodox. 5 A.M. is a bit early to fire on all cylinders. Sorry.

Of course Judaism doesn't believe in Original Sin but it has used the Genesis account of Eve's role as "helpmete" in the same way Christianity does:to keep women in a subordinate role.

Original Sin is a little Christian frosting on the cake of the Judaic text, as is the contention that the messiah of Christianity was predicted in the Old Testament, rendering the holy book of Hebrews merely a preface to the actual revelation.

It's all power politics disgusied as gender and sectarian debate.

Of course Judaism and Christianity are separate religions. In fact, my Jewish friends refer to The New Testament as The Second Testament, firstness not newness thus becoming the criterion of victory in the interminable debate of authenticity.

As for Jesus: It's a hopeless mess. The debate over the ipsissima verba Jesu (the very words of Jesus) extends from the unthinking belief that ALL words in the New Testament came from the mouth of Jesus to the scholarly opinion that at most 31 (thirty-one) words in the New Testament MAY be from the mouth of Jesus, but only as reported 40 years after his crucifixion (at the earliest) by followers who passed them down through oral tradition. And you know what gossip does to any story.

Now--Judaism and Christianity may be different religions, but Jesus himself had ONE religion: Judaism.
The Last Supper was a Passover Supper.

Jesus's actual name was Joshua ben Joseph.


#17 By Trivialize Evil at Your own Risk on December 2, 2009
PS to # 6:

12 million Africans were brought to the US by the slave trade from the 16th-19th century.

I am not aware that of the 27 million slaves worldwide today, the judiciary of any government has ruled that they are NOT human beings (Dred Scott decision); that any legislature has made it illegal to teach them to read ; that any religion has allowed its preachers to use a sacred text (the Bible) to justify the practice of their enslavement.

Twenty-seven million is a dreadful number.

America's role and American Christianity's role in perpetuating the evil of slavery is neither minor nor accidental.

To casually wave away as "moaning" the completely appropriate shame and regret many American citizens feel over 150 years of premeditated evil perpetuated by our government, is the luxury of someone whose ancestors have not be bought and sold and turned into lust toys, even for an occupant of the White House who refused to give his name to the offspring of that lust.

PK
http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/







#21 By (PK) http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 2, 2009

#13 "That's really not very much like the historical Jesus, which is one of many examples where the moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam touted by the left crumbles in the light of inconvenient facts."

Would you, dear # 13, kindly cite your credentials to supersede Albert Schweitzer in his The Quest for the Historical Jesus, who came to the conclusion that there are no "facts" to sustain a "historical" Jesus, only beliefs to sustain a Jesus of faith.

I would be very interested to hear what you "know" other than what other people have told you to believe and what your own personal epiphanies may have led you to conclude (quite illogically), neither of which could possibly be considered a "fact" but rather a "psychological reality".

PK

#22 By Egalitarian on December 3, 2009

To #16: You misunderstand the basis for the traditional role of women in Judaism. The reason why women were not seen as included in the requirements to participate in rituals is that they had other responsibilities, specifically those of caring for children, which would make full ritual participation difficult. Since it is considered necessary for one to be oligated to perform a ritual in order for that ritual to be valid on behalf of the community, women were not allowed to lead services. This view certainly would not pass the tests of twenty-first century feminism, and I am glad that most movements in Judaism have realized the errors in this interpretation. However, the claim that the traditional views of Judaism and Christianity on gender issues are identical is simply untrue.

Yes, Jesus was Jewish. This doesn't mean that his beliefs (to the extent that we even know what they were) or those of his followers are representative of Judaism





#23 (PK) http://theantiyale.blogspot.com December 3, 2009

Egalitarian #22:

I'm not going to speak for feminists. If they have a point to make about women in Judaism having "other responsibilities, specifically those of caring for children" let them enter the fray here and do so. It is self-evident however that the Genesis story has been used by both the religion of the First and the religion of the Second Testament to reinforce biological determinism: If your body has a baby-maker and milk-makers, your FATE is to make babies and feed others. PERIOD. If you can fit in time to be Prime Minister of Israel or Britain or India also, we MEN won't stand in your way. Translation: sexism (non-egalitarianism)

I choose not to talk about what does not exist. There are no FACTS about Joshua ben Joseph about which one can speak (I agree with Schweitzer, see #21).
However, one can talk forever about what one BELIEVES. The two are completely different matters.

I too am an egalitarian. I believe it is elitist to BELIEVE that there is "no way to the father EXCEPT through the son", just as as it is elitist to believe in a "chosen" (and therefore an "unchosen") people.

Sorry for the incovenient truth: Elitism is not something I care to embrace.

PK

#24 By ? on December 3, 2009

This PK is attempting to deny the physical fact of a Jesus? Dude--get over yourself.


#25 By PK on December 3, 2009

# 24
That is a concise summary of Christianity: "get over your self."


#26 By ? on December 3, 2009

Which shows to go how someone can attend a "divinity" school and yet, for all intents and purposes, reject Christianity.

PK, clearly, is unable to get over his self...

#27 By Yale 08 on December 3, 2009
Ahhh,

Yale Divinity School the source and summit of 95% of the stupidity at Yale.


#28 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 3, 2009

Disentangling knowledge from faith and vice versa is precisely why one goes to an ACADEMIC divinity school as opposed to a DENOMINATIONAL divinity school. Yale is the former not the latter. If I recall correctly the ridicule of Yale Divinity School and its students by Daily News posters named Hieronymus and Alum 2008 (in previous articles), the thrust of their "critique' was that Yale divines are mindless babblers of blind faith.

You can't have it both ways. Facts are facts. Jesus is a dubious HISTORICAL figure and an undeniable PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY in people's lives, even mine---although you seem to believe that unless my reality is surrounded by unquestioning allegiance and muddy mysticism it is inauthentic.

Puzzling. Rigid.

* Intolerant, Impatient and Self-righteous!

Yale Daily News

Opinion

Hendrickson, Williams, Patterson, Yun and Chu: Misrepresenting our faith
Friday, December 4, 2009




Over the past few days, Jesse Morrell has been on Old Campus, Cross Campus and a section of Wall St. addressing large crowds of students in the name of Christianity. As longtime members of Yale’s Christian community, we wanted to share some thoughts on his presence.
During his time on campus, Morrell has worn a sandwich board featuring a list of people — among them “Liars,” “Obama Voters,” “Feminists,” “Atheists” and “Potheads” — for whom “Hell Awaits!” In his speeches to the watching crowd, Morrell yelled down dissenting or inquiring voices and called out at passing students,...

#1 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 4, 2009

The voice behind the following quotes is intolerant, impatient, and self-righteous. Whether they actually came out of the mouth of Joshua ben Joseph (AKA Jesus) is another debate entirely.

Paul Keane
M.Div. '80

Addressing the Pharisees
Matthew 23

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! ... Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

Rebuking Peter
Mark 3
...he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men." And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.


#2 By Hmm...on December 4, 2009

Fist off: this "PK" actually reminds me of Mr. Morrell (Mr. Moral?) in certain ways, perhaps relevant to his non-stop grating and berating.

But, on to the article: Please note the immediacy with which Christians recoil in horror, distancing themselves rapidly from one straying from mainstream beliefs.

Contrast this with the relative silence (if not quiet--or joyous--agreement) one hears from our Muslim brethren on occasions such as, say, 9/11, Ft. Hood, Chechnya, etc. etc. etc.


#3 By http://theantiyale.blogpsot.com on December 4, 2009

# 2 Hmm:

The pot calling the kettle black.

Grating? Yes. Berating? No. Just giving back what is dished out.

PK


#4 By As A Follower of Jesus... on December 4, 2009

As a follower of Jesus, I recoil from #2's statement. I am familiar with rapid response tactics from various Muslim communities in the face of extremism. Let's aim for an elevated dialogue on this issue.



#5 By http://theantiyale.blogspot.com on December 4, 2009

Elevate?

Occasionally on these posting walls I feel as if I have soiled my hands, as if the comments are cro-magnon grafitti.

And then occasionally there's an intense intellectual sparring match that makes the degradation worthwhile.

I guess I idealistically expect Yale undergraduates to be engaging in repartee not characater assassination. And much of the time they are.

Then, there are the nasty exceptions.

PK


#6 By Yale 11 on December 4, 2009

Sometimes, we try so hard to soften our message that we begin to embrace all that we sought to change...





#7 By Jesse Morrell on December 4, 2009

I thought that the ministry went very well. I gave very rational arguments against atheism, evolution, and gave good reasons for my opposition to Obama. I will be posting videos soon on my YouTube account "OpenAirOutreach"

#8 By yalie11 on December 4, 2009

Thanks for writing this!

#9 By jglc on December 4, 2009

Jesse, my primary concern was not the rationality of your arguments or how good your reasons are; my worry is that the tone of the interactions you were having with the crowd seemed to be angry, accusative, and sensationalistic (on your part) and condescending, derisive, and put-off (on theirs).

As someone who has been striving on this campus (as an undergraduate and now a member of campus ministry staff) to reach out to students - friends - as we build long-term relationships of mutual trust and vulnerability, to have such a tone publicly set as a register of discourse on faith and Jesus Christ is unhelpful and even, I fear, harmful to that hope.

If you would like to talk further, please do contact me on facebook (Jason G.L. Chu in the Yale network), and let's please discuss how we can, together, show love to my friends and other students on this campus (I do believe that you want to show love to Yale students).

#11 By Digital Sandwich Boarder 9:18a.m. on December 5, 2009
#2 In a way I agree with you, despite your crude opening: I AM a bit like the Sandwich Board preacher.

In fact,three of my blogs are digital sandwich boards (except they don't condemn anyone to hell and they hold a mirror up to the Hallmark-Greeting-Card version of Christianity which poses as religion in America).

One of the admirable things about Yale Divinity School is that they leave room for the dissenting ministry, the outsider ministry, the unauthorized ministry.

Or at least they did so when I was there (76-80). It may have all changed now, although the academic integrity of being a school at Yale means that scholarship will forever be eroding the territory of mindless fervor and blind faith.

Here are three digital sandwich boards I wear proudly without blocking traffic or imposing on anyone's eyes :

Willy Loman's Children http://lomanchildren.blogspot.com

Talking Turkey http://senatorsandbag.blogspot.com

The Anti-Yale http://theantiyale.blogspot.com

There are some overlapping posts in them.

PK


#12 By ? on December 5, 2009

"Or at least they did so when I was there (76-80). It may have all changed now, although the academic integrity of being a school at Yale means that scholarship will forever be eroding the territory of mindless fervor and blind faith."

what are you talking about?
you spam these boards way too much.

#13 By Sky God on December 6, 2009

#12

And you, earth god, poison them way too much with glib vitriol.

Expect me to defend the Divinity School whether you like it or not.

Nobody forces you to read what I say.

PK

#14 By Decidedly fresh on December 6, 2009

SPAM is canned. Anything I write is fresh. Decidedly fresh.


PK

#15 By LIBERATION AND PROCESS THEOLOGY on
December 6, 2009

#12
Apologies. My initial reaction to your comment was impatience. But maybe you honestly don't know what I'm talking about.(Divinity is such an "insiders" game.)

LIBERATION THEOLOGY (for example)--created in the last century--has forced christianity to confront its own sexism and racism with major results. Two significant scholarly liberation theologians taught and published at YDS for decades: Letty Russell and Sr. Margaret Farley.

PROCESS THEOLOGY--created by Alfred North Whitehead and others --has forced a consideration of the possibility that
whatevrer the "Divine" is, it is in process of evolving, much like humanity: in fact that the two evolutions are dependent on one another. Randolph Crump Miller , who taught and published at the Divinity School for fifty years, was a nationally recognized exponent of Process Theology.

Thw whole concept of what God IS, is actually an open and ongoing debate. It isn't settled at all, just because folks in sandwich boards on sidewalks think it is.

Sorry I was grumpy. Ate too much SPAM.

PK


#16 By Recent Alum on December 6, 2009

Jesse Morrell >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Paul Keane.

#17 By I <3>

I'm still waiting for it to come out that this was an elaborately awesome Pundits prank. I mean come on - a sandwich board with "Obama Voters" and "Feminists"? That's something they would do on the Colbert Report. Way too ridiculous to be taken seriously - this has satirical mockery written all over it.

#18 By PK December 7, 2009

#16 Quite accurate continuum.

#19 By Recent Alum . on December 7, 2009

Liberation theology is to legitimate theology what critical legal studies is to legitimate legal thought.

#20 By Lib on December 7, 2009

Liberation theology may not be "legitimate" to the creedalists, but without it Martin Luther King Jr. would never have translated his beliefs into non-violent civil disobedience; women would not be ordained; and Bishop Robinson would not be a Bishop.

PK

PS Without Process Theology (also not "legitimate" to the creedalists) human kind would still be labelled "sinners" and the self-improvement movements (from 12-step programs to transcendental meditation)would be their bastard offspring.

Obeisance to the arbiters of "legitimacy" is a form of intellectual enslavement. PK

#21 By Yale 08 on December 7, 2009

@#20, Did Liberation Theology also make MLK cheat on his wife? Women are ordained like dressing up in leotards makes me a ballerina. "Bishop" Robinson is only a spiritual leader in the insane asylum in which Paul Keane dwells.

#22 By PK on December 7, 2009

Childish. Beneath a Yale undergraduate's dignity.

#23 By @PK's original comment on December 7, 2009

Dear Mr PK,

I found your first comment rather unfair. To bring up the long, complicated, and admittedly political creation of the modern New Testament and point to two random verses to demonstrate a so called self righteousness and intolerance was not at all intellectually responsible. It was akin to bringing up the now infamous sacrifice of Isaac or the "hardening" of pharoahs heart to say that God himself cares not for human will or love. Some things require significant work to interpret correctly and I would wager that you have done that work and do not wholly believe your own words. If your idea of the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were entirely defensible, would the Catholic church not have chosen different gospels to dispel it long ago when they assembled their bible? There are many different systems of relating to problematic passages within the bible, and I firmly believe neither of the passages you quoted demonstrate the negative qualities you claimed. And I am equally sure you were aware of alternate interpretations when you listed them. That doesn't seem entirely kosher, if you would allow me to mix metaphors.

#24 By De-saccharinization on December 7, 2009

# 23

I accept your criticism.

I have a trouble with the saccharinization of Jesus and I guess I go overboard to point out the opposite. I randomly googled those quotes under "angry Jesus"

BTW. I think if Joshua ben Joseph could have been tape-recorded he would have sounded more like the yakkity,abrasive, incessantly,insistant Yasir Arafat (in tone and volume, NOT in content) than the Mr. Rogers velvet voiced version of Jesus modern American christians seem to want.

Remember Arafat? His voice was like fingernails on a chalk board.


And speaking of Arafat: if you look at the Shroud of Tourin (sp?) it is clear that Jesus (AKA Joshua ben Jospeh)looked more like Arafat than he did Mel Gibson's strong jawed, high cheekboned savior in The Passion. In fact, the Jesus of history (which Albert Schweitzer had so much trouble locating anywhere ,textually or archeologically) probably had browner skin than Barack Obama's.

Of course even if the Shroud is a forgery, the forgers portrayed jesus as a short, slack-jawed, oval faced bown skinned semite.


As for content: I tend toward Bertrand Russell: "Any religion which introduced the notion of eternal damnation into the world is evil and I cannot subscibe to it." I might soften that from "evil" to "has caused incalcuable anxiety and suffering".

In a way, my blog post on "Bring Hell Back (on Steroids)" acknowledges that the secularization of christianity has all but abolished hell as a reality. Nobody really fears it any more, at least not until three minutes before death.

ETERNAL HELLFIRE! That's pretty serious stuff.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Sorry I'm so apparently non-negotiable on this matter of "saccharinization."

Happy Reading Week, whether faculty or student. PK

#25 By http://boundandunbound.blogspot.com on December 7, 2009

PS to #23:

I have written a serious, thoughtful paper on the Abraham/Isaac story. It is called The Bound and the Unbound: Oedipus, Isaac and Jesus. It can be found at http://boundandunbound.blogspot.com/

You are the first respondent in dozens of YDN go-arounds, who I think might actually care to read it. I do not recommend it to everyone.

Indeed it has been in my papers in Sterling's Manuscripts and Archives "Kent State Collection" for 30 years. I just exhumed it last year.

PK



#26 By Atheist 2:12p.m. on December 8, 2009
To the original authors, thanks.

#27 By Alabaster9 8:57p.m. on December 8, 2009

Ugh.

If you, the members of YCF and YSC, truly believe that belief in Jesus Christ is necessary to salvation (as I know many of you do from personal conversations), then I submit that it is YOU who are acting in a decidedly un-Christian manner by not doing everything you can to turn your fellow Yalies towards God.

Instead, you pen an editorial criticizing an honest man for saying openly what you think in silence - that the wide majority of Yalies practice sin without remorse or regret.

As for shouting down, I only saw Yale students shout down Mr. Morrell, not vice versa.

I know some of you authors, and I'm sad to say that this article is a piece of intellectual cowardice.

#28 By jglc 9:13p.m. on December 8, 2009

Thanks for taking the time to read.

#29 By SAVED? 10:35p.m. on December 9, 2009

Salvation? Saved from what? The hell created by writers in the first or second century to help launch a fledgling religion?

There are christian religions today which do not include this concept of eternal damnation in their belief system. Try Unitarianism for one.

Please don't tell me Unitarians are not christians because they do not believe in the trinity, another political compromise in the early centuries of C.E. to incorporate polytheism and monotheism simultaneously into one (and three!).

If you want to subordiante your mind to Doctrinalists or a Creedalists then you can spend your life in terror of eternal damnation.

Most people prefer to go into therapy and emancipate themselves from such masochistic choices.

In fact, a cynical (and anti-semitic) view of the entire post-freudian world is that psychotherapeutic movements are a Jewish conspircy to undo the damage which 1900 years os self-flagellating christian hellfire has done to the human psyche.

Why would anyone use his or her own mind to enslave themselves to fear and anxiety and call that being saved?

PK
http:theantiyale.blogspot.com


#30 By jglc 11:51a.m. on December 10, 2009

Alabaster9;

I do believe that belief in Christ is necessary to salvation. But what I distinctly disagree with is the idea that the way to "turn [my] fellow Yalies to God" or to demonstrate His love for others on this campus is to shout accusations and labels at random pedestrians. I can't say whether this approach is effective or not; but I know that, when I examine my most dearly-held beliefs about the person of Jesus Christ, such a way of drawing others' attention seems inconsistent with the heart of how he engaged with others to demonstrate love and change lives.

"I know some of you authors, and I'm sad to say that this article is a piece of intellectual cowardice."

I'm sorry that you think so; I still stand by it, though. Whether I know you already, or don't yet, I would appreciate hearing more feedback on the piece on a personal level. You can contact me through facebook, in the Yale alumni network.


#31 By Re saved 4:08p.m. on December 10, 2009

While JE stands as a monument to a man who made believers quake in their boots through the fear of hell, modern faiths ( most notably the Catholic church) after Vatican II have tried to show that love not fear should motivate. That forgiveness comes perfectly when one is penitent for having failed to love properly and only imperfectly when one turns from evil because of fear some Gehenna or punishing hell. Yet hell, pain, and sin remain as the inexorable consequence of our free will. There is clearly evil on earth. If we have an eternal soul, it is a tragic necessity that we be free to choose evil forever. That choice is necessary for without choice there can be no love and without that, it is not worth existing

#32 SAVED AGAIN on December 10, 2009
#31
Hell was man-made by writers of the NT in the first century C.E.
It is now and has been for centuries a tool of Doctrinalists and Creedalists to bolster the populations of flocks and to thereafter keep flocks in order.
I have no objection to this cosmic Skinner-Box behavior modification system. It may even work in deterring murder, adultery, theft etc.
To give this scorching Skinner-Box a divine or supernatural reality is a leap of faith. It has nothing to do with knowledge.
If one CHOOSES to believe in a triple decker universe with hell as the lowest level, it is a BELIEF not a fact.
There are however psychological states which give the word "hell" real, personal meaning, which can be called "knowledge" and "fact".
Frightening people with religion is cruel (un-christian).





#33 By Saving Saved AGAIN on December 11, 2009

Dear Saved Again,
The same could be said of Heaven. Is a false carrot not more insidious than a false stick? How much more evil would be the use of love to get people to do your will than just scaring them with hell. I come not from the perspective of who made what and when, but from a philosophical one. If, as most christians believe, there is a Heaven, then philosophically and theologically speaking, it is highly problematic that there is not a hell. Perhaps as several saints thought there are few people there, but free will demands we be able to choose heaven and god over hell, even if we are unworthy to make it there on our own effort. On the matter of fact or belief, one has only to read the skeptics of ancient times to know that evolution is a belief, the big bang is a belief, quantum mechanics is a belief. None are facts. I believe in all of them and I would eat my hat if the first two are proved wrong (I suspect a more complex theory may render quantum mechanics obsolete at least in part). We can know very little for sure (perhaps Descartes demon is fooling us or even Krampas). Even considering the electromagnetic spectrum, we can see and feel so very little of existence, I would be rather hesitant to claim my eyes are more valuable than my brain or my heart or my soul. Fact, as Stephen Colbert says, may be a thing of the gut.

#34 By Sentio Ergo Fio ( I feel,therefore I Become) on
December 12, 2009

# 32

Luring people with a hypothetical paradise is cruel too, no matter what the religion.

Sort of like Bernie Madoff of the spiritual world; If it's too good to be true, it ain't true.

The best one can do is try to get through the day without hurting others or the self.

Desacartes tore us apart.

Process theology puts us back together: Sentio ergo fio (I feel, therefore I become.)

PK


# By Heavenly HTML (PK) on Dcember 12, 2009

So a poster named # 32 Saving Saved AGAIN has challenged me to think about heaven (see posts below)

The problem with heaven AKA paradise is that it's ETERNAL:. Who would want that. What a colossal bore.

The other problem with heaven is called Survival of the Personality. This presents many problems.

What about hormones? For so many of us large parts of our personality are governed by or at least shaped by hormones: those things that make us what to mate---or at least unite in a fleshly way. So in this Eternal life, if SEX is excluded, what are hormoneless personalties going to be like? And why would we want to associate with them (an estrogen-less mother, for instance, who didn't want to "mother" us?).

Let's take a real example, the infant son of Jacqueline and President Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, who died a few days after birth.

When he is re-uinited with his dead parents and uncles and grandparents, is he going to know THEIR SCARS, of assassinations, adulteries (Grandpa and Gloria Swanson), tragic deaths (Chappaquiddick; JFK Jr. over Martha's Vineyard), especially Grandma who lived to be 106 or Uncle Ted who saw it all and contributed to some of it?

If you tell me that in a perfected Eternal life we will ourselves be perfected and our sacrs removed, HOW VERY DULL that life must be.

Why would a Kennedy clan without its tragedies be at all interesting to each other or even infant Patrick?

And if you tell me that the infant will be raised to a perfected 30 year-old so he can converse with and understand his relatives, I say HOW SO?

There is no TIME in ETERNITY. Thirty years cannot exist. And even if they could exist, WHAT thirty years would it be? From 1962-92? Thirty years as an AMERICAN , white, male? Or thirty years as a hormoneless, angelic, entity?

The whole thing is way too messy. I think a perfect creator would have done much better than create such a bland, eventless, timeless, celestial corral.

Sorry. Doesn't interest me. Doesn't lure me, and it's opposite (hell) doesn't generate my respect.

Both probably came from human inferences made from glorious sunsets and sunsrises in the heavens and volcanic turbulances in the earth: hence the copernican triple-decker universe of Dante.

My own belief is that we are all 99.9% invisible atomic particles and will return to such a state--unanimated--for eternity: Much more like a moonbeam than an angel.

In fact, we might be a kind of atomic HTML while alive which gets written and uploaded on a celestial screen minute by minute for our three score years and ten, and then is released by death to the timeless "cloud" which retains it when the keyboarding is terminated.










.
36 By Yale 08 2:20p.m. on December 21, 2009

I love Paul Keane.

It is so funny to watch this little man write his ramblings here.

He is a snowglobe of a person, fully encased by his own bizarre ideas, thinking himself completely unique, yet fully repeating past mistakes as new.


#37 By Solipsistically Yours 12:14a.m. on December 23, 2009

For more snow from the globe see December 19 post

"Thornton Wilder's Empty Stage: Bye, Bye American Pie[ty]"

http://theantiyale.blogspot.com